1. Field
The present invention relates generally to methods and apparatus for wireless communications, and more specifically to methods and apparatus for equalization control.
2. Background
In communications systems with higher data rates, errors in received data may result in retransmission delays that prevent full utilization of the available bandwidth, One way of reducing retransmission delays is to reduce bit error rates (BER) in the received signal.
More particularly, during communication over a wireless channel, the channel behavior changes over time, thereby affecting (e.g., increasing errors in) the signals transmitted over the channel. It is desirable to compensate for such variations in channel characteristics upon receiving the transmitted signals. Channel equalization can be implemented by linear equalization or decision feedback equalization (DFE). Typically, the performance of DFE is better than linear equalization if the feedback sequence is reliable, but it may become worse otherwise. Thus, it is desirable to take decision reliability into consideration in designing the DFE. One method is to update filter design as a function of the DFE reliability. However, currently considered methods of implementing this require intense computational power.
There is therefore a need in the art for simplifying the computational complexity in optimizing equalization filtering.